Two Roofs are Better than One

First off, a note on the plural of the word roof. My first thought was rooves but according to the OED, the standard plural in both British and US English is roofs. So roofs it is. (Rooves is still in use and not officially incorrect, though. So that’s my fact of the day.)

So, it’s a little hard to tell, but after a long wait, two large bills, and a lot of drama, we have a new roof! And it came in two stages.

Stage One: Replacing the main shingle roof

After our paint job, this was the primary large maintenance expense we had tried to plan for. As you can see below, this is nice fresh paint (and I still love the colors) but the shingles were unfortunately starting to buckle and come apart a bit as they were a few years past their prime. When we had the house inspected before purchase in 2008, the shingles had been given a 3-5 year remaining lifespan. We pushed that all the way out until the fall of 2015, but it was definitely time. During a big rain, we had to strategically position a bucket in the back bathroom and one in the back storage room, and one wall near a bad join (which I’ll get to later) would suddenly develop random drips coming down the wall. It was especially bad near one chimney, where any really heavy rain had a way of dripping down through the edge of the attic and into one of our closets. Not great.

So, after much handwringing and saving up, we got 3 estimates and went with a reputable local roofer our home inspector had recommended. He was less expensive because he only does regular shingle roofing, not metal or thermoplastic polyolefin (membrane) roofing, and is a small business owner. He did a great job and was really nice to work with. He even built us a “cricket” which is one of these:

No more chimney drips! That raised bit where the roof meets the base of the chimney is the cricket. It basically splits the water draining down the roof surface rather than letting it pool near the side of the chimney, which had been the case before. So far it seems to be doing its job, so hooray for crickets.

So smooth and shingley.

He also installed a ridge vent, which helps keep air circulating in the attic and theoretically helps your shingles last longer because they don’t get quite as hot for quite as long.

Our shingle color / brand was Tamko Olde English Pewter – we picked it because it was a light grey that seemed to fit in with the old houses in our neighborhood. Obviously it’s still a modern asphalt shingle but the lighter color seemed to read well against the older roofs around us, some of which are silver-toned metal roofing or old slate – they’re all shades of grey.

Stage Two: Replacing the weird back-of-the-house low-slope roof

So the larger, main part of the house had a lovely new waterproof hat on and all seemed well, except for one minor (major) thing: the back of the house had an extension put on it in the 1980s. You can kind of see it in the upper left corner here:

We really appreciate this extension because it gives us an extra bathroom upstairs, and lets a lot of light in as well in a part of the house that is north facing and could be really dark. But the low-slope on this roof (it had once been a back porch, we think) means that it’s not a good candidate for shingle roofing. There was some rubber membrane roof up there as well, but it was getting old and starting to leak, the join between the rubber roofing and the shingles was especially bad and letting a lot of water in. Here’s the join:

And here it is from another angle, in process (you can see the ridge vent at the top):

Basically, from what we understand, this sort of flattish roof should probably not have been done with shingles in the first place due to the angle. But it was:

And because of the flat angle (low slope) of the roof, rain could find its way in to this space. Although the shingles were not super old or in terrible shape, the leaks were finding their way in and that was not fine.

So after another round of estimates only two companies even offered to DO the work since it was so finicky. The answer to our problems (knock on wood) is TPO roofing: thermoplastic polyolefin. It’s a thick plastic membrane roof that is heat sealed and lasts well on low-slope surfaces. Here’s a link about it! It was finally finished yesterday and a new skylight was put in the upstairs bathroom. I don’t have any “after” pics of the plastic yet, but it looks like it does in the link above. We’ve had a ton of rain this week and so far so good.

As the last worker (the skylight guy) was leaving he said “You should be all set for MANY years up there!” and I am definitely hoping he’s right.